There’s only one thing wrong with the latest casino proposal — the casino. Everything else about the plan looks good, including the fact it was prepared by British architectural titan Norman Foster, Lord Foster to you.

Oxford Place, as the complex is called, would fill in that nasty unwelcoming space on the south side of Front St. from where the Metro Toronto Convention Centre does its best to suck life from the street to the Rogers Centre, the only white elephant in the world with a retractable roof.

With four towers, residential and commercial, retail and a decent-sized park, the proposal seems much more genuine and informed than the sort of Las Vegas-style spectacle generally associated with gambling casinos.

And after seeing plans for the Port Lands, Exhibition Place and Ontario Place, this one actually presents itself as a part of the city. Still, a casino is a casino and Torontonians have made it clear they’re not interested.

Who could blame them? Most casinos in most cities are dreary and depressing places that wear out their appeal in short order. Indeed, the “great” gambling cities of the world tend to be places set apart, carefully, methodically, disconnected from real life. Visitors are dazzled by the spectacle of architectural fakery taken to unprecedented heights. What happens in Vegas, they say, stays in Vegas.

More often, though, the casino is a concrete box surrounded by empty parking lots. In Thunder Bay, poor Thunder Bay, the casino might arguably be the most dismal building in a town full of dismal buildings.

Oxford Properties is quick to point out two things. First is that the casino will occupy no more than 10 per cent of the site. Second, however, is that the project hinges on the casino. No casino, no complex.

But is Oxford selling itself short? Maybe the plan’s good enough to implement without a casino?

The other features of Oxford Place are convention space and parking for 4,000 cars. Given the site’s proximity, the latter seems unnecessarily large. As for convention centres, they have become airport-like — anonymous, generic spaces, poorly lit and bad for human health, physical and emotional.

With this plan, Oxford has given itself the opportunity to do something much more exciting and potentially profitable; namely, reimagine the convention centre, to take it from its current degraded state and restore it to something more humane, relevant and urban. The process has started: Ottawa’s dramatic new convention centre hints at the possibilities.

Already one can hear the corporate chorus: No casino, no complex.

But that’s old thinking. The beauty of this city now is that it doesn’t need a casino, let alone want one. In fact, the casino needs Toronto more than the city needs it.

Oxford may have done the right thing for the wrong reason. It has identified an opportunity but failed to understand it. The idea that the casino represents some sort of civic saviour has been debunked many times. It’s not just the moralists who want them kept away; casinos are equally offensive to the public realm.

Architects are adept at the art of disguise, but casinos attract attention regardless of what they look like. The deep thinkers at Oxford have taken the plan as far as the casino allows them, now it’s time to go the rest of the way.

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